Well, MS started this gen with 20GB drives. There are some small capacity SSDs which are quite cheap, MS could get a good deal on the related tech and bundle them with 360s then charge crazy amounts for a sensible (as in like 100GB) SSD for a "premium" package. That is how spending more to have SSDs would actually make MS money, people won't feel as big a need to upgrade a HDD if it had one instead of a SSD because it should have plenty of capacity right at the start of the generation.

Load times will be vastly quicker even without the next gen having SSDs anyway.

There is going to be a very fine line in their pricing though. They will have to sell at a bigger loss than previous generations unless it isn't top of the range hardware (I suspect neither the PS4 nor 720 will be pushing any boundaries, but the difference between the two consoles could be large)

Don't expect SSD in the new system. It's all about getting the most value at the lowest cost this coming generation and SSD drives still start at about $80. I do expect Microsoft to go back to providing a hard drive with every system, but it's highly unlikely to be a SSD. A faster disc drive will also help load times. They will probably do something like Nintendo is doing and that is offer different models at launch. Cloud services will also come into play.

I think that model shown looks rather cool. They should call it Xbox Durango.

40, 60GB SSD are cheap and they would speed-up games like crazy, it would be like playing games from a cartridge. You can put an SSD on the PS3 but the system does't make use of all its capacity/features so it ends up being just as fast as a 5000RPM HDD. But the X720 will have newer motherboards with higher speed bus and connectivity and it will be able to take full advantage of it.

SSDs aren't so unthinkable. Unlike tradditional Hard Drives, the same amount of storage in an SSD will get cheaper over time. HDD's hit a "limit" whereby the cost of components just can't get any cheaper. That's why both the 360 and PS3 have upgraded the HDD space sold over time, because it's actually cheaper to do so.

Now Flash memory is different, it always gets cheaper and cheaper so over time the same amount of space WILL cost less money. SSDs are just flash memory (with a controller) packed into a HDD-sized shell. It's not unthinkable that Microsoft may bundle say 16Gb of SSD-like flash memory to be used purely as a cach for games to load faster, faster than a normal HDD can allow.

The costs of SSD's are shooting down so fast at the moment. If we assume xmas time next year as the earliest release possibility for new consoles, a lot can happen in that time.

@Mikefizzled, regarding SSD life-span.

The life-span limits you mention are so out of reach for most people that they aren't worth worrying about. I mean, the Samsung 830 256gb hdd, for example, has a suggested write cycle limit of 3000 cycles. That's 256gb*3000 = 750 terabytes. That'd let you write over 200gb to it every day for 10 years before you should expect it to start faltering. That's in the worse case too.

SSD's are built these days to replenish their cells. they now have higher life capacity but i would prefer a cross hybrid of HDD nd SSD where only certain game data is ported to SSD when u play that game.

If they have plenty of Ram SSDs wont be needed really. But SSDs are due for some more price crashing, but vendors are still trying to get rid of old stock first.

With all the digital content they want to sell you however I think they will want a bigger hard drive. Unless they choose to gimp it at first with small sized SSDs so the fanboys will constantly upgrade hardware with each refresh.

I wouldn't mind small SSDs if they allowed external storage though, because it makes the speed of SSDs standard for all game developers to work with from day one on all systems

The developers already have the kits and so far I've read that AGAIN, the xbox kit is superior to the PS4 dev kit. PS4 is has done away with cell according to insiders. Article doesn't make sense especially when they said the speculate the name is going to be simply XBOX. The first one is just called XBOX, so how do you distinguish the two? If someone walked in a store and said can I get a Playstation, iPod, Nintendo,or Samsung Galaxy...the clerk is going to ask DUH, WHICH ONE?

A small fraction of the harddisk could be ssd to reduce cost but provide performance, and only the active game would use it for streaming frequently used assets, and the SSD portion could be flushed after the game.

However I would like an 8x bluray drive instead of SSD. That'd be pretty good.

Why would we need ssd's ?. I bet you believe them articles too saying next gen game production costs are going to multiply....

BF3 maxed on ultra settings @ 1080p on pc, we'll be lucky to get hardware capable of getting close to that level of performance, games that have already been made over a year ago needing no ssd or crazy high production costs, no need "next gen" either..